A chance encounter: travel, home, and identity

The young people sitting opposite me were not speaking English. I assumed they were tourists like me and asked them if they were enjoying their vacation in the US. But I was completely wrong. It turned out that the seemingly young couple, weren’t tourists. Noah and Luna were their names. Quickly after my question they let it be known that they had been living in what in my ears, sounded like all of Europe. Whilst Luna and Noah often moved both cities and counties, they managed to travel a ton. Luna was passionate about blogging; she was great at it too! The first time the two moved, was when she first created the blog. At first, it was more of a chance to document their journey while travelling, but a lot of people started to read along. Liking, commenting and kept coming back to read new posts. All the travelling did good for the blog. Her follower count kept going up, and so did the sponsorships. I could tell that Noah was proud of how fare Luna had come. Just when Luna ended her telling, the snack bar came rolling through the train hall. Luna and Noah got us gummies, their favorite ones. Noah said that the gummies reminded him of home. Originally, both Noah and Luna came from Scandinavia, Norway and Sweden. The two had always know each other through friends, and one day randomly met at the well-known October celebration festival in Munich, Germany. Their time in Germany was unfortunately cut short, but that did only good in the end, Luna said. At the airport, Luna said what she thought was a forever goodbye. Little did she know, Noah had other plans. Without Luna knowing, Noah got himself a plane ticket to Sweden. In Sweden they met up, and since then haven’t split up. Noah continued saying something along the lines of “buying the ticket at the time, was such a risky decision. What if it was only me who felt a connection at the festival, and Luna would think I was just some creep for following her home, to a whole new country. Thank god she didn’t think like me though... you didn’t think I was a creep for doing that, right??” Noah asked. Luna and I looked at each other and giggled. Looking out the window to my right. The sun was setting, turning the sky all blue and pink. We had just about 3-4 hours left till our final destination. Noah saw me glancing away and asked if I’ve ever seen the sunset from a height in the city of New York. He told me how beautiful and in peace I would feel watching. As if the whole city went into a state of calmness. A dream of mine have always been to live in a big city like New York City. I pictured it for a second, then asked why one would ever leave such place as New York City, unless forced to. “It’s hard to make a city like that feel like ‘home’” Luna added. Sure, the people are friendly and the city exciting, but when you feel lonely in a fully packed city, you know it’s time for a change.